The article examines a mainstream curricular unit on the Haitian Revolution, centered on a culminating role-play activity. Cultural studies, subaltern studies, and hermeneutics are applied as theoretical frameworks to read the curriculum unit and its activities. These theoretical lenses sharpen an understanding of what it means to experience history in the classroom. These lenses are used to consider the political relations of power within the historical moment being studied and the political notions of power within the production of historical knowledge itself. The author conducts an analysis of the epistemological and hermeneutic problem spaces within this curriculum, with particular attention to how this curriculum unit might be translated into an urban school setting that accounts for marginalized student positions.